Comrades in the woods

LAST month's mayoral elections in the three city corporations have exposed some serious fractures in the country's politics. The most crushing defeat that the mayoral candidates have suffered in the city polls belonged to the country's left, all of whom have seen their deposit forfeited. Not only that, they have fared so miserably that given the votes that they have received, it is difficult to tell whether they would have won even the post of a ward councillor if they had contested for such a post. Even if the polls were considered relatively fair till midday, it can never be justified how all the three left candidates, the product of almost over a hundred years of the Communist movement, failed to earn even 11,000 votes together.

Abdullah Al Kafi Ratan, Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) and Bangladesher Shomajtantrik Dal (SPB)'s joint mayoral candidate could not even get 5,000 votes (2,475 votes). This is surprising as Ratan was a popular student leader of his time and he was the President of the Dhaka University unit of Bangladesh Chhatra Union (BSU), which held the Assistant General Secretary post of Dhaka University Central Students Union at that time. Now a city leader of the CPB, Ratan had the backing of the SPB, whose student wing Bangladesh Student Front boasts some significant fan-following among the students in the city. The same goes for CPB-SPB's another joint mayoral candidate Bazlur Rashid Firoz (1,029 votes), who had also seen his deposit forfeited. The total number of voters in DCCS, where he contested, was over 1.9 million.

The same goes for Gono Songhoti Andolon (GSA)-backed Junaid Saki who, despite a favourbale media coverage, bagged 7,370 votes in the DNCC, where the total number of voters stand at around a whopping 2.4 million. Saki, a student leader himself, earned a name in being a known face as one of the leaders of Oil and Gas Protection Committee. Unlike Ratan and Firoz, Saki invested a lot of energy in his campaign and his posters could be seen hanging even in the remote corners of the city. On top of it all, he has been a rather popular face in chat-shows where he aired his opinions on the ways an array of problems that the city is facing can be solved.

The total number of votes that the three Communist leaders combined have scored is much less than Chormonai pir's Islami Andolon Bangladesh-backed candidate Abdur Rahim (14,784 votes) got in the DCCS poll. To make matters even more ignominious for the country's left and equally worrying for those of us who believe in progressive politics, Ratan, Feroz and Saki's total number of votes is 6,005 short of little known Kawsar Jahan who, backed by Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) that is facing an impending ban for war crimes against humanity, successfully contested for the Ward Councillor (Wards 29, 30, 32, Reserved Female).

There is no denying that over the last few years, ordinary Bangladeshis have tilted heavily towards the right and Jahan and a few more JI councillors' election is a testimony to that. Having said that, the only time the Communists became a force to reckon with was in the 1991 general election when the CPB won five seats and secured 5 million votes across the country. And that is more or less what AL-backed candidate alone has got in the last month's DCCN election.

Bangladesh lives in a left neighbourhood--on its South is Communist Party of India (Marxist) dominated Tripura; in Nepal Communists wield mass popular support; West Bengal is known as a bastion of the Left Front. There is no denying that, like Bangladesh, the power of money and muscle play a decisive role in the elections in India and Nepal too. In that background, some of the perennial excuses that Bangladesh's Communists give to justify their lack of popular support do not stand. The left in Bangladesh has never even been able to become an alternative to the two bourgeoise parties. It is easy to blame the latter two and their power-centric politics, but the Communist leaders never explain why and how they have let hundreds of issues slip out of their hands, especially those that the masses have been plagued with. The SPB is a relatively new party, the GSA is at its infancy; and compared to them the CPB is a rather old and bigger party. But its mass organisations, especially the BSU and the labour and farmer's unions are a skeleton of its previous selves. To make the future even bleaker, the Communist movement in Bangladesh lacks a visionary leadership.

The weakening strength of the left is also directly proportional to the rise of rightwing politics. There are reasons why Kawsar Jahan with mortar and pestle symbol has got more votes than Ratan, Firoz and Saki combined, and it's none other than the latter three who should be blamed for this.

The writer is Head of Daily Star Books. He can be contacted at: ahmedehussain@gmail.com
Twitter: @ahmedehussain